Dear Alliance Community,
I am writing to ask you to take a few minutes to respond to these survey questions on the impact of AI in your organizations, your filmmaking, and your community.

Your input will provide *crucial* insight as we continue to gather new funding and resources for our members and partners, convene the field on emerging creative technologies, equity and human rights, and sponsor ethical and sustainable opportunities for media artists, arts organizations, and communities across the country.

Some of you might remember back to 2008 or so (I was at BAVC) and we piloted the Producers Institute for New Media Technologies with the MacArthur Foundation. It was a crucial inflection point for documentary filmmakers; we needed the time and space to not only understand the web, but to build new relationships so we could tell stories in new ways, stream our content online and on our phones, learn to create content for social media, augmented reality and virtual worlds, and deepen the impact of our projects by engaging audiences as co-producers and communities.

The future is here again with AI tools blasting everywhere led by companies led by white men (with a few exceptions, like our friend Marie Smith at Data360), rushing to market with no regulation, no accountability, no transparency, no responsibility. Do we support a moratorium on AI until sh*t is figured out, or do we prioritize building access to the technology so that community arts organizations can teach state-of-the-art AI skills to emerging mediamakers and culture workers? There’s no right or wrong answers to these questions — it’s all about your lived experience helping guide The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture as we develop new programs to serve the field.
Please fill out the Survey HERE.

Wendy Levy Executive Director